Could One iPhone Backdoor Really Expose Apple Inc.'s iOS Owners To Greater Security Risk?

To hear Apple tell it, the creation of a “backdoor” to the iPhone owned by San Bernadino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, propped open however briefly, would imperil the very concept of privacy, not to mention millions iPhones around the globe. 

As a principle and moral argument, this view has been embraced by Silicon Valley and much of the privacy community. And yet on the separate technical question of whether Apple could safely break this one phone without unleashing havoc on the privacy world, there is consensus: yes, Apple can, even if it won't.